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by anabananamammamia



Series: Variations on a Theme [1]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Drabble-esque, Gen, Nanowrimo Warm Up, Original Characters Galore - Freeform, POV Outsider, Passing mention of Jason Todd and Bruce Wayne, cliff-hanger ending
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-15 22:08:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21260417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anabananamammamia/pseuds/anabananamammamia
Summary: Maud Roulett, living beside Crime Alley, trying to survive to her sixteenth birthday. A nanowrimo warm-up that started as a daydream of OFC + Batfam that took on a life of its own.





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**Author's Note:**

> This is pure self-indulgence. In a moment of weakness, a passing daydream took on a life of its own and seeing as nanowrimo was coming up, started writing this to see where it went and if I could. Hence, this is unbetaed and not to be taken seriously especially since my knowledge of the Batman canon is cursory at best.

**What do you do when no one cares for you?**

⦿⦿⦿**  
**

Working as a maid was never something Maud thought she'd be doing but what could one do when they had no other options? It was this or starve, or, as her landlord so kindly put it...start taking clients, to be a little less transparent about it.

Or she could always join the lady on the street corner who spent each day screaming at the sky for no discernible reason. Of course, the woman didn't have a house, as far as anyone knew, but then perhaps if Maud approached her with overtures of friendship she might stop yelling long enough to listen to Maud's proposition and wouldn't the neighbourhood be grateful for the brief reprieve from the madwoman's ceaseless, carrying monologues?

Everyone who knows Maud works at Wayne Manor always has one pressing question: how?

And the true answer is...a bit complex but straightforward. It's a series of coincidences, fortunate and not, that enabled a person such as Maud to attain gainful employment with an household as illustrious as the Wayne's. The details escape Maud on a good day but--well, what is there to say? 

To be perfectly honest, Maud never thought she was actually going to be working for Bruce Wayne in a direct sense. Wayne Enterprises is expansive; comprised of so many subsidiaries, ventures and divisions that it never entered her mind that the man who owned them all was human enough to need a housekeeper. The Bruce Wayne, that almost mythical figure of Gotham high society scene was certainly infamous enough among Gothamites of all social standing. And though Maud's manager had warned her that some of the houses she would be set to clean would be more along the lines of mansions and estates than homes, it somehow never entered her head that it would be anyone famous, or tabloid famous, at least.

We're getting ahead of ourselves, though. Let's start a little earlier.

⦿⦿⦿

Here's where Maud's at: completely broke. So broke, in fact, that she would need money to get herself _to_ broke. And it's not like she was too thrilled about the prospect of giving away a first hypothetical paycheque to squaring away her debts. Because they'd shut off the lights first. Which didn't matter much then because she was surviving off canned beans and dried ramen for the past two weeks and at this point were debating stabbing another hole in her belt so her pants wouldn't sag around her ankles. And the heat was next. Which _did_ matter because it was getting close to winter and at this point she didn't have much spare meat to keep herself toasty through the chill temperatures of a Gotham winter.

Ah, yes....it was never mentioned where Maud lived, was it? Crime Alley. Well, right beside it, actually. A place renowned among a certain demographic and infamous among the rest. That hole Maud was going to poke into her belt...well...she had quite the tidy collection of sharp, pointy implements with which to make that perforation. An assortment of knives ranging from the short, peeling kind, to the longer...butcher variety to the singular, wickedly sharp and crookedly jagged dagger that she was actually afraid to pick up because it looked a little too dangerous for her liking.

Maud has all manner of tools for home maintenance thanks to the superintendent being a lazy and lecherous perverted jerk who one _never_ contacted, especially if they wanted to actually get anything done. Mom had said exactly that the first week they moved in when the pipe in the shower started leaking and instead of calling a plumber or fixing it himself, the superintendent had sneered, catalogued every item in their cramped studio and proceeded to rudely insinuate what it would _really_ cost to fix the broken pipe.

When Mom had then called the landlord to report the behaviour, he'd threatened eviction, hurling slanderous things so loudly through the phone that even Maud could hear them from the bathroom where she had been trying to unclog the drain so the whole place didn't flood.

Mom had hung up, slamming the receiver down with such force, it emitted a harsh, jangling clang and gone to the general store. When she came back it was with a dented toolbox filled with mismatched instruments that they'd spent the better part of the whole night plying the pipe with in order to fix the leak.

Mom's boyfriend, Samson, had come over the next day and fixed it properly as he hummed an Elvis song under his breath, Maud watching him with eagle eyes while Mum puttered about the kitchen, making her famous Belgian waffles Extraordinaire. That was then.

This was now. And now, thinking of Mom made Maud not want to think at all, to move and keep going and never come back. But Mom _was_ coming back. _Is_ coming back. She said she would at least, and she's never gone back on her word yet. She promised. And it made Maud antsy and uncomfortable, her limbs all jittery and twitchy, the hollow shell her stomach was rapidly becoming would feel queasy whenever she thought about it. She'd get up and move around the apartment, tidying to settle the nerves.

If it were daylight, Maud would take a long, rambling walk around the better neighbourhoods until just before dusk and speed home, clutching the short, stubby knife in one pocket as she got closer to her own neighbourhood.

It was alright for the school year, when Maud was so tired by the time the evening rolled around that it didn't much matter what she thought of when her body dragged her under from the effort of the day. And more often than not, she spent the evening babysitting so it didn't much matter whether or not she felt the compulsion _to move_ because she was usually shackled to the well-being of a child.

⦿⦿⦿**  
**

Since Mom left and it was apparent she wasn't returning as soon as she'd said, Maud had upped her babysitting schedule to every evening for a rotating roster of families in the surrounding area. It worked. Or rather, she did.

There was Mrs. Delaney, whose five year old triplets Maud looked after Monday and Thursday evenings, when Mrs. Delaney had her weekly book club and charitable committee meeting, respectively. Mr. Delaney stayed late at the office Monday and accompanied his wife on Thursdays since the project was apparently a joint venture. This left Maud alone with Vivienne, Vernessa, and Vanielle and fairy princesses, ponies and an exhausting amount of staged talent shows, fashion shows and variety performances to both organize, participate and appreciate amongst the usual dinner-making and eating and tooth-brushing and bath-taking and pajama-changing and bedtime story-telling.

Tuesdays were for Suze and Antonio across the hall. Their schedules overlapped awkwardly that day with Antonio's rotating shifts at the factory not able to catch Suze's. So Maud stayed over for the evening with Diego, helped him with his algebra homework and playing so badly at some video game that he created a whole other tag for the times he played with her. She'd tease him that her terribleness only made him better and he'd moan and groan but he never banned her from playing yet. She'd make dinner, clean a bit and make sure he's tucked in before settling in to do some of her own homework.

Wednesdays were for Carrey. His mom and dad were graphic designers who worked from home and that was their deadline day for the corporate offices, oddly enough. She'd take Carrey to the library downtown so he could do his homework, while she tried to sneak some of hers in as she tried to keep him from razing the shelves in search of superhero comic books before taking him to his karate practice. She'd take him out for dinner after, at this little hole in the wall Chinese restaurant across the street, courtesy of father and mother Carrey who didn't need the disturbance of cooking in the kitchen while they liaisoned with corporate. And then she'd always stop at the comic book store, even though his parents did say, "Straight home, after. No shenanigans." Reading and eating aren't technically shenanigans in her book.

Fridays were for the Curmellons: a lively couple who continued stoking the fire of their romance with weekly date nights at various hotspots around town. Their son and daughter absolutely hated each other in that way that only siblings can. They were four years apart and Jayna, who was entering her final year at middle school was enormously resentful of having to be babysat. Her little brother on the other hand was still at that age where he wanted to play and instead had to settle for antagonizing a sister who was no longer interested in playing with him. He took the rebuff as a personal affront, too young to see it for what it was: growing up. These were the nights that left Maud absolutely drained. Between arguing with Jayna about her independence, her social activities and Maud's very presence in the house; trying to find something to entertain Malcolm with and more often then not forced to intercept some diabolical plot of his which would inevitably lead to breaking up a catastrophic row between the siblings. All whilst still making dinner, cleaning house and putting them to bed, left her with a pounding migraine and a fervent wish for a hot bath of her own. The Curmellons tipped abundantly well when they stumbled home with flushed cheeks and bright eyes to a clean kitchen and a quiet house.

Saturdays and Sundays were never set in stone. The weekends were a free-for-all. Sometimes families organized excursions and they might need help but they might not. These were the days you usually babysat as a one-off for people that her regular families had referred her to. It was a grab-bag of every age and disposition that often left her more exhausted then even her weekly schedule.

⦿⦿⦿**  
**

As it was...she was too busy, really, to think of anything beyond school and work. Her social life dropped off the radar when every invitation and request was met with, 'sorry, work.' Or: 'sorry, schoolwork.' To the degree that she knew her friends began to think she was lying to blow them off by the way the invitations dwindled to nothing and soon it seemed like they were even avoiding her. And it hurt, when she spent one lunch eating alone, unable to find or connect with any of the usual crew. One lunch grew into two... and two to three...and three into so many more...

But Maud couldn't afford to skip a day.

Her mother was gone. And with her, the paycheques.

Samson never came round unless her mother called him over, the stoic man generally uncomfortable around Maud to the degree that they'd only exchanged the briefest of words. To date their longest conversation had been about the Red Sox and gone something like this:

"How about them Red Sox, eh?"

"I don't really follow sports."

"Ah...well, then..."

"Want me to go check on Mom?"

"Oh, uh-huh! Yeah, that'd be mighty nice."

She had a sneaking suspicion that he was also leery of the area they lived in, but then again, that wasn't surprising considering it was _Crime Alley_ for christ's sake. Maud often wondered if it weren't for her, Mom would be snug as a bug, holed up with Samson in his roomy bungalow near the suburbs that she'd only seen pictures of from her Mom; the pair of them living the american dream with the white picket fence, the car, the dog and the cookie-cutter perfect life.

She'd called him once. Two months in, three weeks longer than Mom's original return date and the conversation had gone something like this:

"Hey Samson, it's Maud."

"..."

"Cam's daughter?"

"Right."

"Have you...have you seen my mom, lately?"

"..."  
"It's just, she went on this trip and she was supposed to be back but she's extended her stay and I just wondered if she said anything to you about it?"  
"...."

"No."

She'd been abruptly met with a dial tone. And nothing but dial tones from any subsequent attempts to contact him. So, yeah, maybe she'd lied. _That_ had been the longest conversation she and Samson ever had and probably ever would have. The last time she tried calling, an automated voice told her that number no longer existed and Maud, though she tried to look him up in the phonebook, couldn't find anyone with his name listed in the Gotham area.

⦿⦿⦿**  
**

And it hadn't really mattered at first because Maud had been doing okay for a while. Mom had apparently set up automatic bill payments so her account covered things for a few months. She, in retrospect, is actually sort of surprised by how long it went on before that first bill came back unpaid and overdue and suddenly she was scrambling.

She'd had to call the bill companies and cancel the automatic payments. Something that required a good bit of extreme patience and a great deal of creative storytelling so that they would allow _her_ to make the cancellations. If she ever heard tinny, recycled muzak again, it would be too soon. Thereafter she went to the bank and paid in cash, using her mother's card.

The teller was suspicious on her first visit because she clearly wasn't a middle aged woman and spent quite a while scrutinising addresses to be sure each bill matched the one on file. She had to present her student id in the end and say that her mother was at an appointment and had sent her along to complete the task. She'd tacked on a glib bit about how she was learning responsibility and independence and being exposed to real world issues for the teller to finally relax a little and process the transaction.

The babysitting money kept her afloat then, that and her saved babysitting funds. She was lucky enough to have lunches at school and dinners with the kids every evening. She had managed rent, hydro, utilities, maintenance , phone and internet for another three months, stretching herself increasingly thin as time passed. Then summer hit and everything changed.

The Delaney's went away to their cabin up north with family and didn't need a au pair for the duration, they had said somewhat reluctantly. Their parting words, "You have a great summer, Maude! Enjoy yourself!" had a hollow ring to it when Maud could think only of the precipice she was teetering on. Carrey was going away to a series of summer camps and wouldn't be back until a week before school started. The Curmellons were travelling to 'the motherland', as they liked to say, for the summer and wouldn't be back until, again, just before the first day of school. Suze and Antonio sent Pedro to his Tia Gloria for the summer, smiling apologetically when she broached the subject and patting her back, "You enjoy your summer, chica. Youth's the time for fun!"

Maud had to laugh at the way it worked out: she ended up having more free time during the summer than she did during the year and nothing to fill it with.

She tried picking up more one-time assignments, relying on her reputation and the network she'd established during the year, hoping things would turn more regular but the work wasn't steady enough and she worried about covering everything that month. She tried going out, pounding the pavement and scouring the net, jobsites and agencies, but nobody gave much credence to a nearly sixteen year old high school student with extensive babysitting experience on a skint, bare-bones resume. She feels so stupid for not making preparations for this, the contingencies she should have been preparing for long before the summer actually rolled around.

But by now, everyone had hired all the camp counsellors they needed. In all honesty, it wasn't that bad. She's overplaying it. She still got work and even if she was stretching it thin that month, it wasn't as though there were debt collectors knocking at her door. She would be _fine_.

Famous last words.

And she was fine. She'd made some cuts to be able to afford everything. Skimped in any place she felt she could and taken on any job she could get her hands on. Which is why she'd been on a twelve hour assignment with a company picnic combined family reunion out in the Palisades that she normally wouldn't have taken. Three of their nannies had fallen ill with some form of contagious virus and she was tasked with overseeing a group of rambunctious and particularly destructive ten year old boys who were hell-bent on playing cops and robbers to the detriment of all other attendees.

Maud had just managed to corral the group into a pavilion at the edge of the property in lieu of convincing them that they needed to better coordinate their strategy against the robbers in order to capture them when said robbers jumped down from the trees in ambush and landed...on Maud.

She didn't exactly limp home but her gait was decidedly uneven when they finally dismissed her just before the fireworks display by the beach.

She took the bus back, dozing with her backpack in her lap, trapping the heat like a bulky blanket. Maud misses her usual families. The Delaneys always had their chauffer drop her at the end of the night, Carrey's father gave her a ride and the Cullmellons always paid for her cab home. This was a risk, Maud knew, you didn't walk alone at night in Crime Alley but she was afraid of...of so many other things... just that little bit more.

Maud knew-- _knows_ that any rational person would have called the police if their mother didn't come home. But she'd seen the police come here. She'd seen CPS case workers and officers come and separate families and watched as children disappeared. She'd lived here a long while now and has yet to see them return.

When she babysat, she heard how people talked. The neighbours loved a scandal, even if they moderated their tone; even if they swathed their words in the appropriate language of sympathy and shock, they still talked. And it was never a pretty picture they painted; what happened to the families and what happened to their children.

The kids at school talked too, when someone left and didn't come back. And Maud had been part of it: in the hallways gathered around lockers, at the lunch tables or passing notes in class-she'd joined in all the speculation and gossip. And a part of her couldn't bear to be the subject of the next round of the rumour mill, having witnessed firsthand how vicious it was.

Another part of her didn't want to admit it, didn't even know how to take it. Because this wasn't the first time Mom had left like this. And that was it: Mom had left and she hadn't come back. Yet. And if this were the Palisades, Maud knows she would be declared missing immediately and a search warrant or alert sent out for her, investigators assigned to her case. But this is Crime Alley and Maud knows that when Mom comes back, they'll probably end up arresting her for child abandonment among a host of other erroneous charges they'll pile on her head and Maud'll end up in the same place anyways.

So she kept it together, for her sake and her mother's. Kept the ship running, which was why she took that job she shouldn't have and ended up walking home alone after dark. A recipe for disaster.

But she was fine. She was_ fine_, gripping the stubby knife in her jacket pocket and not exactly limping as she walked down the street. The boys had, after landing on her like a gym matt, enlisted her in their game. Maud took the opportunity to not so subtly create and enforce a plan of attack that did not disturb the other guests, kept the stakes high so the boys were invested and most importantly everyone _safe_. The family running the event had tipped almost extravagantly well and requested she return tomorrow since the ill nannies were expected to remain so for at least the next two days.

So she _was_ fine, you see. Absolutely fine. Settled because she had an opportunity that gave her the space to breathe a little what with the end of the month coming up. And she really was nearly fine right up until she was thirty seconds from her front door. And that rankled. Later. And then. Her mind would descend into what if's. What if she had been just that much faster. What if she had taken an earlier bus? What if she hadn't taken that job in the first place? That way madness lay. And Maud wasn't mad, which is why she would get up and clean the apartment again if it was evening or go out for a walk, to outrun those thoughts during the day.

Maud didn't have many thoughts that night that she can remember with any degree of clarity. She tries not to think about it too much, anyways, but it always comes back to her in the nightmares she has every night without fail for the entire week afterward. She never remembers how she got there, in that dim, dank alleyway, only that his wide torso blocks the entrance, his looming figure casting a shadow from the streetlamp flickering behind him.

He wears gloves and a baseball cap low over his face so she only sees his mouth and chin. In his hand there is the firearm. And it is pointed at her, gleaming despite the shadows, the barrel yawning larger than life, a black hole from which oblivion beckons. She remembers the feeling of the knife's plastic handle, gripping it so tight in her pocket that her fingers ache.

"Give me your money." He'd growled. His finger flexed visibly on the trigger.

"I'm fifteen. I don't have any money." Maud doesn't remember feeling anything but paralyzed so she's never sure _how_ she managed to get those words out of her mouth.

That's when things got messy. He'd stepped closer, pistol at the forefront and demanded that she remove her backpack. Maud doesn't remember what she did, only the sensations: a rush of heat followed by a sobering cold and the pain in her fingers from the press of the knife, a cacophonous bang directly above her head that had her ears ringing thereafter, sound dulled and equilibrium shaken.

In her dreams there is always the harsh dig of her backpack's shoulder straps and then the feeling of her hair getting ripped out of her scalp.

This is when Maud usually wakes up, cold sweat soaking the sheets, breathing ragged and feeling like she wants to scratch her skin off without the energy to move a muscle. She usually flops back down on the pillow and focuses on not reliving the first beating of her life.

She'd incapacitated his predominant gun hand, she knows that much from the blood that she'd tried to wash out of her jacket afterwards. What she does remember is the backpack. She remembers it with a dizzying, telescopic focus.

It's worn out, the threads stitching it together fraying in strategic places but she can't afford another one. It has paint stains and glitter splotches from the three V's, pins from her and Carrey's trips to the comic book store and a Wayne Tech keychain that Pedro gave her when she actually won a match though she has yet to win another one. The colour has faded significantly and the bottom is now a dust-stained dull dark grey that creeps up the bottom edges: a pale, inky sludge.

She doesn't remember the hits and the punches, doesn't remember how they landed or what it felt like, her blood rushing to her head, interwoven with the buzzing filling her ears until she can't perceive anything but the motions. How the polyester fabric of the backpack handles had bunched and creased in her grip as she held on until her fingers were numb. The backpack would drift in and out of focus, like she were in an earthquake until she loses sight of it completely. And this is the part that has Maud running for the toilet or the sink or the trash bin. Whichever she can make it to first.

Because the next thing she saw was the nose and the cheekbones and eyes and eyebrows of the face beneath the baseball cap right before it exploded. Maud's usually hunched over a receptacle of some kind when the memory whirls down to its dregs.

The body stood for several long drawn out seconds, the gaping maw that was his mouth pouring blood down his chin like a penance as he brought his hands up to it. Maud will never forget how he touched the wound like he didn't feel it, like it wasn't even his and the blood painted his fingertips a red so dark it's almost black and pooled in his palms, crimson rivulets leaking down his forearms and dripping on the asphalt which his knees heavily/painfully connected with when he fell.

Behind him stood a goliath, swathed in shadows and a jacket, smoking gun in hand and a mask as red as the blood pouring out of the mugger's mouth in front of him. He'd raised the gun and taken a step forward and that's the point where Maud's memory completely blanks.

⦿⦿⦿

She wakes up in the early morning hours of the night. Her whole body aching so thoroughly that she just lay there, in a pool of ebbing and swelling pain washing over her in lapping tides that licked razor sharp spikes of discomfort. They paled amid crashing waves that submerged her so completely in their depths that she couldn't breathe when caught in them from the all-consuming hurts of her body.

She lies there, fading in and out of awareness for she doesn't know how long, her mind losing thoughts that slip under her fingers like eels in a river. The room spinning and pulsating under her inconsistent gaze until the light from the studio's one window turns the hermetic, sterile blue of dawn and she can see her bruised knuckles and scratched hands laying atop the blanket. 

Getting up was done in stages. She didn't think she would have been able to do it normally if she had all the money in the world; first turning her head to the side, waiting for the resulting pain to pass. Shifting a knee up and sliding a foot closer to the edge of the mattress, breathing deeply as it aggravated her knee, which straightened with a pop that she heard through dull buzz still filling her ears. She stops breathing when she rolls her torso over, a multitude of sins stealing her breath, tight bands about her chest and torso, molten veins of searing agony from the base of her neck down her spine. She slides out of bed, letting gravity help until she's kneeling like those pictures of sculpted martyrs in ancient basilicas she'd seen in a slide of her history teacher's lesson on Europe.

How Maud makes it to the bathroom is beyond her. The studio is tiny. It's less than seven paces from the pull-out couch to the bathroom door. Crawling is cumbersome and probably takes longer than walking actually does particularly when she does it favouring one knee. It aggravates all her aches and pains that bit more and in different ways than if she had been on her feet but she can't find it in her to make the journey up, the thought of standing making her head throb.

She collapses in front of the toilet, palms flat on the cold tile, forehead leaning against the porcelain bowl, heedless of the disgustingly unsanitary ramifications of using it as a pillow. She lays there for too long, until her hot forehead feels cool before she uses the seat to lever herself up and onto it so she can sit. She slumps over her knees, her back, chest and head protesting the action and breathes for several minutes before opening her eyes to see the faint outline of her silhouette in the dark bathroom. Reaching out a hand, she gropes for the sink and winces when her scraped hand finds it. Much like the toilet, she uses it to help her stand, afraid for several moments that she may topple back over when her back spasms and her knee buckles and her head throbs so viciously that she's nearly bent double over the sink.

She stays that way for several long moments to get her breath back and shuffles what feels like centimetres at a time, hands gripping the sink faithfully until Maud judges that she must be close enough to the light switch and reaches a hand out blindly in the direction she thinks it must be. The light flickers on after a few wild swipes that went wide and Maud squeezes her eyes shut as the bulbs atop the mirror wink to a brilliant piercing beam of glowing light that stabs at her pupils.

She waits for her eyes to adjust. They hurt even though they're shut so she has to force herself to squint them open.

There is a stranger looking back at her. Someone they show in school when they give talks that end with the school counsellor saying that anytime anyone wants to see them, the door is always open. Maud feels...well...she feels terrible but to _see_ exactly _how_ terrible she's feeling is another layer of Clingfilm awfulness on the already well wrapped body of horrible things she's experiencing. She has a proper black eye and a split lip, a thin ribbon of blood dried to a crusted brown down her chin. Her cheek is swollen and she has a bump on the temple above it that throbs faintly when she tears her gaze away to look down at her body.

She's still wearing the clothes she wore yesterday though they are wrinkled and stained with what looks like blood and dirt. Her knees are both bruised although one is worse than the other; so blue, it's almost black and very obviously swollen round the bone. She keeps one hand on the sink, her blood rushing in her ears as she pulls up her torn shirt and sees bruises. An assortment of them. A fine collection of multi-toned rich blossoming purples, blues and spots of black.

She drops the shirt, eyes tearing as her breaths turn to pants and her vision tunnels. Maud looks up, avoiding her reflection, eyes drifting to the medicine cabinet over the toilet and her mind along with her gaze.

She hadn't touched the medicine cabinet since her Mom left.

"Better to always be prepared, _ma coeur chère_." Mom had said, the evening of their third night in the apartment.

Maud had spent the entire night prior, curled up into her mother, pretending to sleep as they both listened to a vicious altercation outside.

The next day Mom had returned with shopping bags from the pharmacy stuffed full with things like gauze and iodine and ice packs. Maud had helped her unpack them in the bathroom, making faces at each purchase that made her mother smile reluctantly and bat her upside the head with a roll of bandages. "_Ma pupuce_, you know _je t'aime_, but you will thank me on that day you may, god willing it never happens but- you may need it."

Mom had rapidly knocked on the wooden bottom panel of the medicine cabinet, rattling its contents, as bottles wobbled precariously. Maud had put down the isopropyl alcohol in her hand, assumed her most pious expression, hands clasped in front of her in the sign of prayer before she made the sign of the cross as she solemnly intoned, "_In nominae Patris et Fillli et Spiritus Sancti_."

Mom had swatted her again, without the cushion of bandages in hand and Maud protested, "You're too superstitious!" as she ducked another swipe. Her mother paused, hands resting on the rim of the sink as she looked in the mirror, mouth pursed and brow furrowing.

Maud put the bottle of ibuprofen down as she, too, turned to watch her mother's reflection. Claudine Roulett <strike>was</strike> _is_ a beautiful woman with large blue eyes set in a long, thin face, with high cheekbones and a long thin nose to match. Her golden blonde hair was gathered in a practical bun, for unloading shopping, her thick bangs brushing her dark eyebrows. A freckled, fine-boned hand with a scar over the writer's callous on her ring finger and a sun spot over her left wrist came up to scratch that dark brow idly as she zoned out at her reflection.

Maud watched this, her eyes met her mother's gaze as her attention shifted. Maud was undeniably her mother's daughter. However, whereas Mom looked like a vibrant Grecian sculpture, Maud was the washed out, badly-made copy. It was as though someone had taken Claudine and squished her down and forgotten to give her colour. Maud's eyes were a murky grey, her hair a dull, dishwater blonde, her nose snubbed and face rounded. Mom liked to call her _ma pupuce_ because she looked like someone had shrunk Claudine in the dryer and added bleach.

Her mom reached over, wrapped an arm around Maud's shoulders and pulled her close. Maud saw her features soften in the reflection as Mom looked down at her saying, "Why don't I show you how I did my last reading...hmmm?" She'd brought up a hand to tuck Maud's hair gently behind her ear as Maud pulled a face.

Maud watched Mom smile as she said, tone bemused, "And I can show you how I did _mon_ _maquillage_, too, _d'accord_?" At that Maud looked up and smiled. "_D'accord_." She'd said as Mom dropped a quick kiss to her forehead before squeezing her in a one-armed hug.

And Mom _was_ right. She was so SO grateful because she did need it that morning. The tears fell in earnest as Maud opened the medicine cabinet and saw the dusty collection of medical supplies her mother had amassed all those years ago. Never to be used until that day. And in that moment, as she stared at the supply and remembered that afternoon with her mother Maud wished fervently that she was here. She wished so intently that Mom were here that it feels like a whole new separate ache to add to the list of injuries she needed to address.

For a wild moment she remembers not even knowing where to start, standing there in the cold light before dawn staring blankly at a cabinet stuffed fuller than a first aid kit and feeling like she was drowning. Thinking that she should call an ambulance, go to the hospital, get the licensed professionals to take care of all her woes. And with that thought, logic hitchhiked and said that hospitals and medical professionals also meant due diligence and questions. Questions that she would have to answer and protocol that would need to be followed and police that would inevitably get called.

Because she's still a minor, as far as the law is concerned, and that means they will call her mother, and when her mother won't pick up, they'll come looking for Claudine Roulett. And when they don't find her where she's supposed to be, Maud knows that it will only snowball from there to the very situation she had been so afraid of: social workers and CPS investigations and official reports and corrective measures. They'll take Maud away to where her mother won't _ever_ find her and likely never will. She's heard the rumours about the foster care system.

And Maud can't do that. Because her mother always comes back. _Always_. And Maud needs to be here when she does. So she'd taken a fortifying breath and reached for the bottle of ibuprofen, hoping to take the edge off what was building to become a stupendously debilitating migraine, as she patched herself up.

⦿⦿⦿

The backpack was gone. When Maud had shuffled out of the bathroom; freshly cleaned and painstakingly bandaged, she'd been met with a mess of grungy blankets on the couch, a pile of bloody denim near the door and a glaringly absent backpack. She could feel the panic creeping up her throat, dulled by her injuries; her muted hearing and throbbing head making it hard to feel the unnerving thread of unhinged hysteria edging into her thoughts.

She'd hobbled over to the denim bundle on the floor, leaning heavily against the entryway wall that separated the galley kitchen from the door. She leaned over, her back twinging the whole while, muscles spasming in protest as she got her fingers just close enough to hook the fabric before pulling it up, dangling in her grip, one hand against the wall to keep from over balancing. She fumbles through the fabric, fingers clumsy and shaking as she grazes over stiff, blood-caked fabric and threads pulled free from their stitches, pieces coming apart at the seams.

But there, in the left-hand pocket is the steady weight of her cell-phone and Maud gasps in relief, body sagging further into the wall at its discovery as she pulls it out, fumbling slightly.

She flicks it on, and it lights without a hitch, illuminating the space around her as it comes to life. The background is still set to the picture of last Halloween that Mum had taken of the two of them in the bathroom mirror.

"Come on, _ma petite minette_. You will look so good, _tres charmant_, as a little cat." Mom had wheedled as she brandished a paintbrush, the tip glistening black.  
"_Maman_!" You'd whined, ducking away from the weaving end of her brush, seeking out pale skin for its canvas.

Mom had snagged a hold of her escaping arm and pulled her close, saying, "You will _love_ it, Maudette. And you will not even notice it is there, I _promise_."

Maud had remained still for several long seconds before sighing and saying, "Alright," in defeat, allowing her mother to draw close and paint on her face, engine-red mouth hanging open and dark brows scrunched in concentration.

The bristles tickled and Maud twitched as they stroked the contours of her chubby cheeks. Mom clucked in warning, paintbrush stilling for a brief couple of seconds as Maud got herself under control.

"_Ma chère_, you look adorable." Mom had said and Maud twisted round to see her reflection, miffed at the moniker so often lobbed her way by the adults in her life, as her mother cried in dismay at her sharp movement.

The blob of a nose on the tip of her own was misshapen from her earlier twitching, the whiskers made up of squiggly lines instead of straight and one long stroke drawn from her cupid's bow all the way across her cheek and into her hairline. She surveyed the damage with a rapidly deteriorating disposition, eyes drawn to the quick movement of her mother covering her mouth with one hand, her eyes crinkling into slivers in amusement.

"_Mom_!" Maud had groaned and Mom had burst into giggles so infectious that Maud couldn't stop from smiling in response, prompting her mother to laugh outright; carefree and happy as she pulled Maud into her embrace and pressed a sloppy peck to her temple.

That was the picture on Maud's phone, facing her now. Mom beaming, red lips smudged from the kiss, the imprint if its stamp just visible on the edges of Maud's temple as she, too smiled, the whiskers folding in on themselves so it looks like someone had not so much drawn on her face as doodled.

Maud stares at the picture, drawn down memory lane, she blinked rapidly as she came back from the short trip, eyeing the low battery and timestamp reading: 4:34 am. The date shows that it is the next day and reality comes crashing back around her.

She's scheduled to start at the Palisades in the next three hours and Maud cannot imagine looking after a group of rowdy boys piped raring to go with energy to burn when she can barely even walk, not to mention she looks exactly like she'd taken quite the beating. Maud cannot show up to work like this. She absolutely cannot.

She takes a breath, taps in the passcode and scrolls through her contacts until she comes to the one she needs. She calls the number and after several rings gets a bleary and hoarse voice on the line, sounding completely disoriented as they grunt, "Hello?"

Maud makes her apologies to the increasingly distressed personal assistant who'd answered and eventually hung up on her abruptly after several unsuccessful attempts to urgently convince her that the 'flu' she'd picked up couldn't possibly be the contagious one the other three nannies were currently suffering from and yes, she absolutely could still look after children when she was ill, contagion be damned.

Maud looked down at her screen in consternation, eyeing the caller list that her phone automatically displayed after the assistant had disconnected.   
"Bye, Janet." She whispered wryly and sighed, looking at the list before shutting it off and tucking the phone into the pocket of her shorts as she rummaged through the thoroughly decimated jacket. She'd gotten into the apartment last night, somehow, so the keys had to be around here _somewhere_. And there, peeking out of one blood-splattered sneaker were her keys.

She groaned as she bent down, forcing herself to go lower than she did for the jacket, gritting her teeth as everything in her body protested the movement. She stood and her head throbbed so hard that it caught her breath and she had to close her eyes for the sensation to pass, salivating as nausea turned her stomach and she swallowed heavily.

Slipping out of the apartment she kept a hand glued to the wall as she shuffled down the hallway. In the near silence of almost dawn, there was no one out or even moving about, the sounds from the street as muffled and still as they have ever been. Maud's slow progress allows her to catalogue the streaks on the carpet from her sneakers, a trail that led down to the stairwell and down to the foyer. She has no memory of leaving those marks. It's beyond strange seeing what must be the prints of her sneakers on the faded and frayed fibres of the carpet. The feeling is decidedly bizarre.

She manages the stairs with agonizing slowness and a cast-iron grip on the railing, wondering, belatedly, what would happen if she were to run into anyone in this condition. Besides Sue and Antonio, who Maud knows best, she only has an acquaintance with some of the other residents she babysits for and beyond that, nothing but a passing familiarity with the rest. Not many families choose to live beside Crime Alley and the rest who do, are the reclusive and secretive types that she never sees except the odd time they pass each other taking out the trash. It's not unusual then, for the building to feel empty and silent, particularly at four in the morning.

She lets herself out the front door, struggling to open the heavy glass and metal contraption, arms shaking as she gets it just wide enough, the weight of it almost hitting her as she slipped through. There are only two steps to reach the pavement then and Maud follows the much clearer prints, smeared in places and surrounded by splatters in others that lead to the alleyway created by the space between the building where she lives and the adjacent one. If Maud weren't battling her own paranoia and exhaustion, if she weren't focused on placing one foot in front of the other and staying upright, she would have probably made more than a little noise over the fact that she had been attacked, literally a yard away from her front door. That all she had to do was fight a little harder, make a little more noise, move a little faster, and she would have been _fine_.

The anger is locked behind a hazed wall of physical pain and discomfort, and the now single-minded resolve to find that backpack which had carried some clothes, a notebook, a novel, her favourite pens and pencils, perfume her mother had given her for Christmas last year, sunscreen, her phone charger, her wallet and most importantly of all, the money that had been her payment for the work she'd done the day before. The money she was going to use to pay off some of the bills that were coming due in a few days. The money that she needed to keep herself housed and fed and warm and clean. The money that was gone with the backpack that had disappeared. Vanished like all the most important parts of her life that had evaporated from it in what felt like an evening.

Maud took cautious, tentative steps into the alleyway, eyes peeled for any untoward movement, any suspicious bundles or lumps along the walls or amid the trash cans lining them. There was nothing out of the ordinary. The further Maud got, the harder it became for her to continue, the reality of her situation crawling up her spine and into her throat until she felt like she had swallowed a jawbreaker that left a permanent lump in her throat. If she had the energy, she might have been frantic in her search, but as it was, she was only thorough and methodical. She didn't want to think that she hadn't looked everywhere because if she hadn't looked everywhere, that meant that she didn't find it. This was, of course, predicated that it could indeed be found, meaning it was in this alley. If she didn't find it and she wasn't scrupulous, then that meant that the fault lay with her since she hadn't put the effort into finding it. However, if she were meticulously detailed in her search and she didn't find it, then that could mean that it wasn't there, and the blame lay elsewhere.

Maud regretted her imperfect logic and stalwart subscription to it when she got further into the alleyway and stumbled across the prone form of her mugger, splayed across the cracked asphalt like a specimen pinned for vivisection by some antiquated scientist.

Her feet propelled her, despite her aches and pains, almost of their own volition, to limp closer, her eyes morbidly drawn to the carnage, the gory image seared into her retinas as though branded. She squinted, stepping even closer, though her instincts screamed at her to _run_. She wished she'd listened.

For there, tacked onto the chest of the man who had somehow still managed to mug her, was the calling card of the infamous Red Hood: "_Let the punishment fit the crime_." 


End file.
